PLATE XXVIII.

Blow-pipes are only carried by the Indians when hunting. They are weapons of the chase, not of war. Most of the tribes manufacture their own, but the Bara, who neither hunt nor fish, get theirs solely by barter from other tribes. The blow-pipe—obidiake of the Witoto, dodike of the Boro—made by these tribes is a heavier weapon than those made by tribes farther north.[133] It is constructed, like those of all tribes south of the Japura, in two sections, bound together with great nicety, and has invariably a mouthpiece made of vegetable ivory or a similar wood that fits round inside the mouth. These blow-pipes are from eight to fourteen feet long, with a quarter-inch tube, the outer mouthpiece being an inch and a half. They are sometimes made from reeds[134] by the Boro and Andoke, and I have seen small Boro boys with a hollow reed pipe, about half the ordinary length. This was merely a plaything. These are the simplest form of blow-pipe, and would appear to be the original type. Though I imagine reeds are always obtainable, for the flora did not seem to vary, as a rule the wood of the chonta palm is employed.[135] On the north of the Japura, the tribes, I believe, mostly make their blow-pipes of palm stems.[136] Two long strips of this wood are slit off by notching and levering with a stone axe, as already described. The chonta poles are trimmed, rubbed, and grooved with sand and a paca-tooth tool till they form the corresponding halves of a tube, which must fit most exactly. All this entails very careful and tedious work, so it is fortunate that time to an Indian is of no account. These half tubes are then fastened together and the bore polished with what is practically sand-paper. A string is dipped in some gummy substance, and then covered with sand. When dry, a fine polish is secured with this by friction. The blow-pipe is next bound from end to end with fibre-string, or narrow strips of pliant bark.[137] The whole pipe is then coated with some resinous gum, or wax.[138] A small bone is fixed about twelve inches from the mouthpiece, and this acts as a sight. Such a tube will send an arrow a distance of from forty to one hundred and fifty feet, and an expert hunter shoots the smallest birds at twenty yards. The chonta-wood pipe is the heaviest and most lasting, but I do not know if it carries farthest. The Indians’ accuracy of aim is extraordinary. The arrows, or darts, are about nine inches long, no thicker than a small match, and are tufted with fluffy down from the seed vessels of the silk-cotton tree,[139] the tuft being of a size to fit exactly into the bore of the pipe. The arrows are made of the leaf-stem spines of the Patawa palm.[140] They are carried in a quiver of bamboo lined with dried grass or fine rushes that protect the delicate darts. The poisoned points are partly cut through so that they break off in the wound. Once a bird or animal is hit the poison kills them very speedily. The silk-cotton for tipping the arrow is carried in a gourd that is attached to the arrow quiver with strips of cane, and to it is also tied the jawbone of the pirai fish, which is used as a file for the points of the darts. When the arrow is ejected from the blow-pipe there is a slight noise, like a child’s pop-gun, but it is not enough to scare the game.[141]

Indians are no more provident as hunters than as housekeepers. When game is plentiful they will kill and eat, kill recklessly, and eat to repletion. But game is not always plentiful. It may abound to-day and all be gone to-morrow. Even parrots and peccary will fail at times. Birds and beasts wander, and though the hunter can often judge of direction through knowledge of their habits, and—what in this instance probably governs them—which fruits are ripest and where most abundantly to be found, this will not altogether account for the fluctuations in the supply of game. It must also be remembered that in this respect the bush varies greatly, and even where animal life is not scarce it is apt to become so on the advent of man. Even apart from the disturbance caused by the hunter, game in the vicinity of any human settlement tends to disappear. The hunter must go farther and farther afield.

The Indian is an expert trapper. His traps though simple are ingeniously contrived, and seldom fail to act. An empty bag is due more frequently to absence of game than to the inadequate plan of the trap. Monkeys are caught with a running-noose loop snare made of liana, which is adjusted carefully along a fruit-bearing branch of a tree. Any monkey attempting to reach the fruit strangles itself in the noose, exactly as a rabbit does in the wire of an English poacher.

PLATE XXIX.

ANDOKE BAMBOO CASE WITH DARTS FOR BLOWPIPE AND GOURD FULL OF COTTON

A shallow pan of water is the Indian bait for ground vermin. Round it they dig a ring of holes, about a foot across, on which are lightly spread grass and leaves. Rats, mice, frogs, and small snakes venturing to drink fall through into the holes that are deep enough to hold them captive till the trapper comes round and secures his catch. For larger animals the hunters dig a line of pits, with a sharpened stake fixed upright at the bottom of each. The game, corralled and driven over these, falls in through the sticks and leaves that hide the opening, and is impaled on the stake. The Karahone arm their pits with poisoned arrows, and dig a succession of these death-traps down a forest avenue.[142] A more complex contrivance is made with carefully poised logs. This description of trap is set in a forest run, the brushwood on either side is twisted and plaited into a rough fence, and the trap erected in the opening. The slightest pressure on the footboard releases the weight, and brings the heavy trunk down with a crash on the intruder. A trap of this kind will catch anything from a squirrel to a jaguar.